Drivers, pedestrians need to share the road with care

Walking is good for you. Unless, of course, you’re trying to cross New Jersey streets. Then it can be deadly, because despite nearly $74 million allocated for their safety since 2006, pedestrians are becoming hood ornaments at an alarming rate.

New Jersey drivers and pedestrians: Deadly together.

Pedestrian deaths jumped 34 percent over the past year — at a time when every other major category of traffic deaths declined in the state. In previous years, pedestrian deaths had been falling. “We’re hoping it’s just an anomaly,” said Pam Fischer, director of the state Division of Highway Traffic Safety.

It might be a temporary, vicious spike. Or it could be another product of our hectic and reckless era. Today, New Jersey drivers aren’t just speeding, they’re texting and talking on cell phones and reading e-mail on their BlackBerries. That’s treacherous for pedestrians, at a time when we want to see more people getting out of their cars to save on gas and heal the environment.

Mix those realities with a lack of sidewalks, darting jaywalkers, and an aging, slow-reacting population, and you get a deadly cocktail.

Let’s face it: New Jersey — where cars, bikes and bodies jockey for the same patch of blacktop — isn’t walker-friendly. And crosswalks, when they even exist, offer little protection from harried drivers who have their attention on something else.

Pete Kasabach, executive director of New Jersey Future, a nonprofit research and policy organization, says the state is “building and upgrading streets with no sidewalks, no crosswalks and no bike lanes.” His group has joined a coalition of traffic and environmental activists calling for the state to adopt a Complete Streets policy. That program — adopted by Connecticut, Delaware and other states — would require engineers to design roads to accommodate drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians whenever a road is built or rebuilt.

It’s a sound idea. People aren’t going to get out of their cars if walking to the bank or the store has become a deadly game of dodge ’em.

But pedestrians must realize they have a responsibility to safety, too. That means staying with disabled vehicles on a highway, crossing local streets in the crosswalks, watching for vehicles and wearing brightly colored clothing.

In the first nine months of this year, there were 122 pedestrians killed on New Jersey’s roads, and they all had one thing in common: Their deaths were needless.